Rock 'n' Roll Friends

I've not quite reached the High Court judge stage yet ("The Beatles? Are they a popular beat combo?"),  but it's fair to say that my finger is very far from the pulse of what's hot and what's not on the music scene these days.

When I do buy music, it tends to be back-catalogue stuff on iTunes, individual tracks more often than not, so it's pretty rare that I get excited by the release of any album. But I must admit that I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Quiet Heart: The Best of the Go-Betweens, because they remain one of my favourite bands even 23 years after their original break-up. It doesn't seem to have been released in the UK yet, but it should be out any week now.

It's not the first compilation by any means, and this album is as good a summary of that original incarnation as you could hope for, packed not only with the hits-that-weren't but also various obscurities and B-sides, such as the magnificent Rock 'n' Roll Friend. I bought it twice on tape, and wore both out, after it came out in 1990 - the CD version unfortunately has four less tracks.

Quiet Heart is shorter, and also includes tracks from the band's second coming, when Robert Forster and Grant McLennan reunited in the late 1990s, so there's bound to be plenty of "why isn't xxx on here" pub conversations arising from it (you can start now after a quick look at the track listing below). But while I might like to see Love Is A Sign on there, for example, it's good that the wonderful Part Company and Dive For Your Memory made it this time. Most Go-Betweens fans will already have it all, of course (and will buy this anyway), but if it encourages anyone new to listen to the best thing ever to come out of Cairns, Queensland, then it will have done its job.

1. Spring Rain 
2. Love Goes On 
3. Bye Bye Pride 
4. Part Company 
5. Darlinghurst Nights 
6. Bachelor Kisses 
7. Surfing Magazines 
8. Karen 
9. The Clock 
10. Head Full Of Steam 
11. Streets Of Your Town 
12. People Say 
13. Finding You 
14. Dive For Your Memory 
15. Cattle And Cane 
16. Right Here 
17. Here Comes A City 
18. Quiet Heart 

The Go-Betweens: "Bye Bye Pride"

In July and August 1990, I was working at the DHSS in Loughborough just before my last year of university. It was a very hot, dry summer, with day after day of blue skies, and all things considered, the job (as a clerical assistant) wasn't a bad one. The work was generally interesting, and I spent large parts of each day walking from one office to another, so I was out in the open air. It was also reasonably good money.

The downside, where the latter was concerned, was that the office was directly opposite The Left-Legged Pineapple, Loughborough's legendary independent record store. Inevitably I spent most of my lunchtimes, and far too much of my wages, on various albums I dug out there.

In retrospect, by far my best find was a newly-released compilation, The Go-Betweens 1978-1990. Beforehand, I'd heard of the Aussie band, and heard and enjoyed a few tracks by them, but didn't know nearly enough. They were critical darlings (NME was fond of calling Grant McLennan and Robert Forster the Australian Lennon and McCartney), but that was pretty much all I knew.

So I bought a tape copy of the album (because it had a few more tracks than the CD), and played it to death all that summer. Perhaps it helped that the very un-British weather made their songs all the more evocative of the steamy, Queensland coast*, but mainly it was down to the fact that here were compact, often ridiculously catchy pop songs with literate lyrics. About a year later, the tape snapped, so I replaced it (by then I'd also started to buy my way through their back catalogue in secondhand record shops), and when that copy also wore out, a few years later, I bought the CD.

On the way to Australia the other week, the iPod's shuffle function threw up the track above - Bye Bye Pride, probably my favourite of theirs. Apart from not being able to believe that it's 20 years since that summer (my other main memory of it is watching a teenaged Sachin Tendulkar make a brilliant 100 against England - he's not aged badly), it reminded me that McLennan's no longer with us, sadly. He and Forster did belatedly get a little of the recognition they deserved, but never enough. Anyway, enjoy possibly the only rock song ever built round an oboe riff, and listen to McLennan's superb lyrics.

* A similar thing happened with my other Aussie favourites, The Triffids. I first heard them blasting out at a record shop on a blisteringly hot morning that perfectly fitted the setting for all their best songs. I sometimes wonder if I'd have been as instantly grabbed by them on a foggy morning in November.

Swan song

I've raved before on here about The Triffids, the best group ever to come out of Australia (yes, even better than The Go-Betweens). When they appeared on the scene in the mid 80s, they were rightly lauded by the music press, but like so many other great bands of that era, failed to quite cut it commercially, even when they moved from an Aussie indie label to Island.

Their best album, to my mind, was 1986's Born Sandy Devotional, on which they sounded unmistakably Australian (no, scrub that - unmistakably Western Australian). Great, poetic songs about loners and losers, all of them victims of an unforgiving, harsh landscape, with a country-tinged, occasionally epic backing.

By 1989, they were experimenting with drum machines, samples and programming, and although you couldn't describe The Black Swan as an unqualified success (it's far too eclectic, ambitious and thus unfocused for that), it's actually stood the test of time pretty well. And it's just been re-released, complete with loads of bonus tracks (it was originally intended to be a double album), although the best things about it are still probably the 'typical' Triffids tracks - the gorgeously languid Too Hot To Move, the poppy Goodbye Little Boy and the hugely evocative New Year's Greetings. The latter is based on a Les Murray poem, The Widower In The Country, and fully does its source justice.

The album had just come out in May 1989 when I saw them play at Newcastle University. In fact I remember walking past the students' union record shop on a very hot day (we had summers, back then) and hearing Too Hot To Move blasting out, and going straight in to buy the record and tickets for their forthcoming gig.

Live, they were wonderful - intense and brooding one minute, poppy and playful the next. But sadly, that was it. They took a break, never intending it to become permanent, but it did. Singer and main songwriter David McComb released one patchy solo album, and dabbled in other bands, but died in 1999, closing the door on a sadly underrated band.

Do yourself a favour - buy the re-release, buy them all if you can. You won't regret it. In the meantime, here they are in their heyday, performing Wide Open Road.